


Mirror Images

by chiiyo86



Category: Kuroshitsuji | Black Butler
Genre: Chapter 129 spoilers, Comes Back Wrong, Gen, Identity Issues, Twins
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-31
Updated: 2017-10-31
Packaged: 2019-01-22 09:08:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,079
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12478148
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chiiyo86/pseuds/chiiyo86
Summary: He watches himself in the mirror and sees Ciel staring back.





	Mirror Images

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Piscaria](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Piscaria/gifts).



> Happy Halloween! Hope you enjoy the treat. :)

He watches himself in the mirror and sees Ciel staring back. He has taken his eye-patch off, but with the hair that falls into his eye and the relative darkness in the bedroom the pattern on his right eye is close to invisible. Without it, there’s almost nothing to set his mirror image apart from the image of his twin, who is somewhere, outside this room, doing God knows what in the vast mansion. His twin who is back from the dead.

 _How? How? How can it be? Why does he still look identical to me, as if we’d grown alongside each other? Is it possible that I left my brother for_ dead? _No, no, Sebastian confirmed his death. Sebastian doesn’t lie._

A series of light knocks rattle on the door, and, before he has the time to say anything, the door opens and Ciel appears, framed in the bright rectangle formed by the doorway. Ciel could be just another mirror presented to him, except that he has a slight, sardonic smile. 

“There you are,” Ciel says brightly. He’s holding a steaming cup in his hands that smells like warm milk. “So that’s where you’ve been hiding.”

“I wasn’t hiding,” he replies defensively, although Ciel isn’t wrong.

“I see you’ve taken Father and Mother’s room for yourself.”

His immediate reply gets stuck in his throat, held back by a burning sense of guilt. Ciel makes it sound like he’s stolen the room from their parents. He knows it’s not the case, remembers his reasoning for moving to this room instead of settling back into the one he’d shared with his brother and still thinks it makes sense, but the words to explain it have somehow vanished from his mind.

“What did you want me for?” he asks instead. 

“Oh, right, I almost forgot.” Ciel holds out the cup to him. “This is for you. You were out in the rain. You need to warm up if you don’t want to get sick.”

Ciel is grinning and it’s almost like old times, except that the grin looks slightly wrong, not to mention that the situation, as a whole, exudes a wrongness that makes it hard to breathe. _Ciel attacked the townhouse, killed Agni, almost killed Soma. I would shoot anyone who’d done that._ He takes the cup and says, “Thank you.”

He drinks and faintly acknowledges the taste of warm milk and honey—a sickening amount of honey, just the way he likes it—but his mind is too numb for him to take pleasure in his usual comfort drink. Ciel watches him, still smiling. _That’s right_ , he _is Ciel now. I’m not. I never really was._

_Who am I, then?_

“How is it?” Ciel asks.

“It’s good,” he answers automatically. He doesn’t want to ask the question on his mind, but he’s never been one to shy away from hard answers. “What’s going to happen now?”

“What’s going to happen?” Ciel links his hands behind his back and spins on himself. “What should have always happened, of course! I’ll be the earl, and you, you can have your toy company just as you wanted, and we’ll be together forever. Isn’t it great?”

The worst of it is that, indeed, it would have sounded like a great future only a few years ago. But too much has happened, too much has changed, and _this_ , what is in front of his eyes, is wrong and off and not something he should accept out of weakness. 

“You went to the townhouse,” he forces himself to say. “You attacked my friends.”

Ciel stops dancing around, and suddenly there’s a completely uncharacteristic stillness to him. 

“Yes,” Ciel says. Most of the lighting in the room comes from the open door, and maybe this is what makes the gleam in Ciel’s eyes look so eerie. Without the smile, Ciel is more his mirror image than ever. “And so what? Is there anything you want to say about it?”

“I can’t accept that.”

Ciel’s next move is so fast that there’s no time to defend himself before he’s shoved to a wall, an arm pressed up against his throat, blocking his air. Sebastian’s name flickers across his mind, but he can’t talk and he’s too dazed with shock to even think. Ciel has never, ever been the kind of person who used violence, least of all against him. When they were six, Ciel had pushed him as they were fighting for a toy and he’d hit his head against the corner of a pedestal table. He had been stunned rather than really hurt, but Ciel had still spent the whole night crying from guilt and fear. 

“We’re going to be happy,” Ciel says and there it is, the edge that has been hiding under his smile the whole time. “We’re going to be together and we’re going to be _happy_.”

Ciel has relieved the pressure on his throat just enough to let him talk. “Of course,” he says breathlessly. “Forgive me, I spoke out of turn.”

Ciel lets go of him so suddenly that he loses his balance and falls to his knees. He coughs, trying to ease the pain in his throat. 

“You’re all forgiven,” Ciel says, his bright smile back in place as though it’d never left. “I understand why you would be a little perturbed by the circumstances. But it’s all going to work out, trust me.”

“Of course I trust you,” he says, closing his eyes, and this time it’s sorrow that makes it hard to speak.

Ciel says something about dinner being almost ready and exits the room, leaving him down on the floor without offering to help him get up. _Sebastian_ , he thinks, and somehow knows that the demon can hear him. _We have much work to do._

He hauls himself up to his feet, his body aching and heavy with exhaustion. He knows what he has to do now, and it’s awful, it’s most likely going to break him, but by now managing horribly difficult things is just what he does and the anticipation of pain is almost comforting in its familiarity. He’s not Ciel Phantomhive anymore and he’s not Vincent’s fragile second son either, but he’s Her Majesty’s Watchdog who does what he has to even when it’s terrible, and this, at least, is something he can cling to. He has become one of the shadows.

He hears Sebastian’s velvety voice echo in his mind. _Yes, my lord._

**Author's Note:**

> One day I'll be able to write a fic about the twins without having to resort to narration tricks to get around the fact that we don't know our Ciel's name. In the meantime, at least, it works pretty well with his identity issues. :)


End file.
